John Schlesinger – the filmmaker behind Midnight Cowboy and Darling – once compared directing motion pictures to going down into a mine: “Once you've started you bid a metaphorical goodbye to the daylight and the outside world for the duration.” Not long into last weekend – our first official weekend of shooting Fish Tank--did this sense of unreality, of dropping further and further away from the surface of waking life, set in for me. To describe the actual production element of a film to me is ineffable, comparable only to Schlesinger’s simile of departing from the outside world. Time was both relative and antagonizing present. The lighting setups and blocking processes seemed agonizingly slow while the takes were the essence of brevity. The seemingly long periods of waiting were broken by spells when everyone was flying about. My brain partitioned itself between impatience, tenseness, quick decisions and long ponderings. Perhaps the only consistent thought I had throughout the weekend was gratitude. Film only works if there is collaboration, and amount of effort and focus the entire cast and crew put into this weekend is inexpressible to me. The owners of the location as well – a family – expressed such a high degree of agreeability and a willingness to accommodate that I felt our honorarium to them did not begin to cover half of it. It is my hope that this dedication will continue for the next five production days. There was one moment in particular that was able to cut through the constant fog of all that was going on. It was late Sunday night, and we were running against both the clock and the amount of film left on the roll. The shot was a close-up of one of the lead actors. I shouted “Action!” and devoted my eyes to the video monitor. It was then that I saw such a wash of expression and feeling in the actor; a head-on reification of the character that I had written almost two years ago. I almost didn’t want to say “Cut;” I just wanted to let him keep going. This feeling is what I will hold on to for the rest of the production, and I feel as though it is enough to keep me going as I sink deeper away from the daylight.